It’s traditional at this time of year that I run close-ups of the first few crocuses, earliest harbingers of spring. Hah! Another chance to test out the proposition that mobile-device cams mean you don’t need a serious camera any more.
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Well, what do you think?
Two points to be made here: First, these crocuses are lying bastards because Spring isn’t anywhere near, it’s been brutally cold, with highs around 0°C and nighttime lows way below that. The forecast is for snow.
Second, I’ve decided that my single biggest gripe with the N5-cam is its extreme wide-angle-ness; somehow or other, it needs a zoom. I had to crop these way down to get a reasonable composition.
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Janne (Feb 08 2014, at 17:28)
I really enjoy my Xperia Z1 camera. But this is one aspect of phone cams where they're still nowhere near their dedicated brethren: the space and cost constraints mean they just aren't flexible.
At that limited space, adding the elements for an optical zoom is likely impossible, at least without really degrading the image quality and settling with a small aperture.
Another example is the Z1. The lens is f/2. Which is nice, in low light especially. But it is _only_ f/2 - there is no adjustable aperture. So even in broad daylight you'll get f/2 and the (somewhat) narrow in-focus range and the lousy corner rendering. A second setting at, say, f/5.6 would have helped a lot, but the space and the budget just isn't there.
As an idle dream, I'd love to see a phone camera using the Ricoh/Pentax Q mount. It'd have a flat lens-cap style lens by default, but then you'd be able to switch to a tele, or a fisheye, or a zoom whenever you needed to.
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